


sticky hands and grip tape

by searwrites (sears)



Series: dudebro au [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Homophobic Slurs, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Sexual Content, Swearing, aggressive/violent behavior, boys being dumb, dudebro!au, repressed sexuality, somewhat graphic descriptions of skating injuries/wounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 06:12:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1594529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sears/pseuds/searwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>originally posted on tumblr.</p><p>----------</p><p>this was a prompt from superveryvery - erejean skater dudebros that dont get along and then do. i liked the prompt a lot and decided to do something a bit more substantial with it</p>
            </blockquote>





	sticky hands and grip tape

It’s one of those days that signifies the beginning of summer - where the air isn’t that warm, but the sun seems to bake the concrete and heat you from the soles of your feet up through your bones. Eren still wears a hoodie, his old one that says ‘modern life is war’ in white lettering on the front, the one that has holes at the sleeves for his thumbs to fit through. He usually can’t stand the summers - they drag on forever and this town is boring as fuck as it is, but something about today just feels _good_.

 

He traipses over to the skate park, shoes scuffing against the tarmac as he crosses the street to it, and then stops dead at the gate, sits and glares at the sight before him. The park isn’t usually this packed, but that’s beside the point - there’s a crowd forming. Around a person, it seems, that’s hogging the the back platform of the vert wall.

Eren approaches it as if he doesn’t care, as if something new or some kind of celebrity being in this town isn’t exciting. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his torn up blue jeans, stands up on the balls of his feet as he gets to the gaggle of teens just to see what all the fucking commotion is about. The fact that more than half of this crowd is made up of chicks is not something that goes unnoticed.

_“Dude, you’re from Cali? Holy shit, have you met anyone famous?”_

_“You’ve skated the boardwalk before?”_

_“Do you surf too?”_

Eren scowls at the sight he’s met with - this neon plug fucking beach waster. He’s got a beanie that’s too small shoved on the crown of his head, one that will almost definitely flop right off of him once he kicks off, and then these skin tight denim shorts cut off above the knee paired with a hideously bright yellow tank. What kind of asshole wears cut off shorts, honestly?

“Excuse me,” Eren says, voice sharp and threatening, “Some of us actually fucking skate here.”

He shoves his way through the crowd, ignores the squawks and glares, and then not-so-accidentally bumps into the beach hipster. Serves him right for existing, really.

“You can’t skate in any of the other half a mile of concrete, bro? Gotta shove off right here, huh?” Neon asshole asks, and Eren pushes right up into his face, sneers and bares teeth like a dog protecting his territory.

“Muscle beach is that way,” Eren says, pointing back to the road with his thumb, and then he positions his deck on the edge of the ramp, hooks it on the truck to keep it there.

Eren isn’t stupid. He hears what the girls are saying about him. _“He’s an asshole, ignore him”_ and _“No friends apparently means no fucking manners”_ or _“Shove him off it, Jean.”_

“Nah bro, just move back, it’s cool.”

Eren whips his head around at this, glares at this Jean dude like he’s offended he isn’t more pissed off than this. Jean is actually pulling the crowd _away_ from the ramp, giving Eren space. He says something about ‘showing them later’, and then as Eren kicks off, the crowd finally disperses.

-

The sun is just beginning to dip below the horizon, cooling the air down, and if Eren’s skin wasn’t damp with sweat, he would’ve noticed it sooner. He’s got the hoodie pushed off his shoulders, hanging around his elbows as he stomps to a halt, kicks up his board, and moves to leave the park for the night. He’s got homework to do, too much of it. Being in all advanced classes in high school sounds a lot less intimidating than it actually is.

Eren nearly jolts out of his skin then, because Muscle Beach is sitting back on one of the quarter pipes around the dome, his legs dangling, kicking against the structure of it. He’s _watching_ Eren, has been for some time, it seems.

“The fuck do _you_ want? Got nothin’ to do now the sluts aren’t lined up to suck your dick?”

The boy laughs - actually fucking _laughs_ , so hard he keels over with it, clutches his stomach.

“Oh man, why are you so fucking _angry_? I thought grungers actually being full of teenage angst was a myth, thanks for proving that particular stereotype right, bro.”

Eren frowns, deep enough that he can feel it in the wrinkles between his brows, can tell he’s making his face ugly and isn’t intending to. _Fuck_ this guy, he doesn’t know shit. Eren should walk away, and is about to, but then he starts running his mouth again.

“I’m Jean,” he offers, and Eren rolls his eyes, “You’re Eren, right? Sasha told me your name. I just moved here, I’m from-”

“Cali, yeah, I heard,” Eren says, tone full of annoyed bite. Why is this conversation even happening? When is the honest to god last time anyone wanted to talk to him since Armin moved away?

“Right. You’re pretty good, you know?” Jean says, like Eren should be flattered by the compliment, and Eren scoffs.

“Pretty good? The fuck do you know about _good_?”

Jean shrugs, smiles with only half his mouth. “Enough,” he says.

Eren decides this conversation is going nowhere, and it’s kind of weirding him out how this Jean kid is all smiles at him now, acting like he’s interested in Eren. Eren isn’t even interested in _himself_ , shit.

“Hey, you should swing by my place tomorrow,” Jean calls out, but Eren keeps walking. “I live in the blue house at the cul-de-sac, you know where that is?”

Yeah, Eren knows. It used to be Armin’s house. Still, he ignores Jean and doesn’t turn around, hops over the rail to get to the fence gate at the road.

“I’m building a half-pipe in my backyard, you could test it out for me, yeah?” Jean shouts, and this gives Eren pause.

He turns, glares at Jean, and asks, “Why the fuck are you building a half-pipe when you live two blocks from the park?”

Jean shrugs, does that stupid crooked smile shit again. “That’s what I do.”

Eren can only imagine. _That’s what he does_ \- like he needs more magnetism to get people interested in him, needs more reason to have these kids want to be around him, at his house. He’s from out of town, that’s more than enough, but it’s only been one day, and this guy already seems like a total whore for attention.

“Whatever,” Eren mumbles, and then leaves the park.

-

So, Jean is a total tool.

Eren blames his glaringly obvious tool-age as the reason for thinking about this. In the end, he decides to actually go to Jean’s house, if only to see what it’s like without Armin there. Which doesn’t make any sense at all, but no one has to know that. He tries to think up an excuse for Jean, for showing up at his house like one of the many from the flock of sheep he’s probably filtered in and out of his backyard, but Eren can’t find it in him to makeup that kind of bullshit lie. He’s curious, he’ll settle for that.

He lets himself in through the gate, momentarily forgetting that it isn’t his former best friend that lives here anymore, that he can’t just waltz in like he owns the place. He almost turns around and leaves, spooks himself into realizing what a fucking dumb idea this was, but Jean snaps his head around and catches him, stands from where he was leaning over what looks to be a practically finished half-pipe.

“Shit, I didn’t think you’d come,” he says, and Eren rolls his eyes, tosses his board deck-side down in the grass.

“Friend used to live here,” he mumbles, surprising himself with his own honesty and then blushing from it, distracting them both from whatever he just said by knocking aimlessly on the curved plywood of the ramp.

“You build this in a day?” Eren asks disbelievingly, standing to push the weight of his foot against the seams in the wood. “You only just moved in, right?”

“I already cut the frames and supports before we moved,” Jean says, and Eren walks over to his board to pick it up. “Just had to put it all together.”

“Sounds like you bought a fucking kit,” Eren grumbles, and Jean rolls his eyes.

Eren places his board in the center, crouches down and rolls around using his hand on the pipe for support, surprised by how impressed he actually is with it. No lumps, it’s nice and smooth.

“It’s not rocket science,” Jean says, and then jumps up to sit on the platform.

Eren doesn’t even ask, just starts to skate, slipping a few times with how fresh the surfacing is, and ignores the way Jean is so obviously watching him.

“Pretty good,” he says intentionally, huffing and running fingers through his greasy hair, his skin only just starting to get sticky with sweat. It still isn’t hot, but Jean makes it look like it is - still in those too-short-shorts and barely there tops.

Jean smirks, “Thanks. Few people around here have asked me to build them one too, might make some decent cash from it.”

Eren snorts, smirks a little himself when he skids his board and the screech of the wheels makes Jean flinch. “Why the fuck would anyone pay you to build them a pipe when they have a park?”

Jean shrugs, fiddles with some twined up hemp fucking bracelet he has around his wrist. “Convenience, I guess?” and then he looks up at Eren, “Privacy?”

Eren says nothing, and apparently this only pushes Jean into spewing more bullshit. “You can come skate here whenever you want,” Jean offers, on some kind of similar tangent to whatever he was talking about before with the whole privacy thing, and it pisses Eren off. “You obviously know how to let yourself in. Come by whenever, you know?”

Eren ignores this on purpose, hoists up his board and hops off the platform into the grass, makes a break right for the gate. He’d gotten what he wanted. Yeah, house looks the same, grass still grows, the half-pipe works. Back to the park.

“You ever longboard?” Jean calls out after him, and Eren groans at how this is turning into a thing for him.

“No, we aren’t surfers here. No ocean means no waves, _bro_ , or haven’t you noticed?”

“Oh, I have noticed,” Jean says, and Eren turns just in time to watch him sprint over to him, the loose hem of his tank top bouncing around his chest. Which is a fucking odd thing to stare at, so Eren pulls his eyes up to Jean’s face. “Here,” he says, handing Eren a blue and brown longboard, big and hideous orange wheels, just as neon as Eren would expect from Jean. “You’ve got the perfect roads for it, could drift for miles downtown.”

Eren snorts, pushes the board back into Jean with probably too much force. “I don’t do that shit,” he says.

“Don’t?” Jean asks, and then cocks his head to the side, “Or _can’t_?”

“Fuck you,” Eren says, and then snatches the board from Jean’s fingers, tosses it down to the concrete a little too hard and pretends he can’t see Jean’s shit eating grin out of the corner of his eye.

They ride down the length of Jean’s street, slow and lazy, Eren stood stiff with hands in his pockets on the board. It wobbles more, but at this speed it doesn’t really make a difference. Jean is way too into it, crouching down and letting the very tips of his fingers brush against the asphalt beneath him, swerving into a drift, despite the road being completely flat here.

Downtown here isn’t like downtown anywhere else - it’s small, only about four blocks wide and maybe six deep, but it’s the only part of town that boasts real hills, that isn’t completely flat. Jean doesn’t even give any kind of warning, just crouches real low on his own longboard and scoots off, drifts from side to side down the slope, uses his hands on the ground to pull him back from the curves. It’s like he’s surfing and the road is his wave, and Eren lets himself get lost in that for only about half a second before he remembers Jean is expecting him to follow.

Eren pushes off, crouches down with probably significantly less grace, and then starts off down the hill. There’s no cars, the town is dead right now, so there’s no real reason to panic. Even still, Eren’s heart starts thundering in his chest, lands a little too heavily on his hands a few times and scrapes his knuckles. He misses a swerve, goes out a little too far at too high speeds, wobbles and loses his footing. Jean is way the fuck down at the bottom by now, so he probably has fucking front row seats to Eren’s foot slipping and then him subsequently eating shit.

The board skitters off out of his scope of vision and his entire body flips with the awkward angle he was at. His knees thud against the concrete, followed by his hip, followed by his elbow. On every point of impact Eren’s brain fizzles out a little, and then once the world has stopped spinning, Eren lifts himself up onto his hands, notices how mangled and bloody his knees are, torn right through the denim in his jeans. His elbows are scuffed, too, little holes in the sleeves of his hoodie.

“Jesus,” Eren hears, and then groans inwardly at the sound of Jean’s feet slapping against the asphalt, at the fact he’s fucking running over to him, “You didn’t say you couldn’t cruise, _fuck_ , I just assumed you could. Are you alright, bro?”

Eren sits back on his knees, shoves at Jean hard enough to have him falling backwards onto his ass, which is only satisfying until he sees the wince on Jean’s face. Which is fucking infuriating in itself - why should he give a shit if he hurts this asshole? Eren shoves that train of thought aside, pushes up to stand.

“Fuck off,” he says, pulling his hoodie back up over his shoulders, wincing himself as he tries to pull his jeans up over his wounds.

“You don’t have to be such a dick,” Jean bites out, and Eren catches sight of him standing again, picking up his board. “Hurt your fucking pride more than your knees, apparently.”

“Suck my dick,” Eren mumbles tiredly, stalking away.

“Maybe I will the next time your lonely ass comes crawling to _my_ house.”

“Is isn’t _your fucking house_!” Eren yells, voice cracking with the force of it, and then turning back as his cheeks burn in shame at letting through that much obvious emotion.

“It is now,” Jean says, but Eren is far enough away that he can pretend he doesn’t hear him.

-

Eren sees Jean at school sometimes. He ignores him just the same as he ignores everyone else, the same as everyone else ignores him.

Except Jean doesn’t ignore him. Jean will catch him staring and wave at him like he wants to come over, Jean will say ‘hi’ in the hallways and laugh when Eren burrows into his hoodie, hikes his backpack up higher onto his shoulders. Eren ignores him because it’s easy, because it’s what he does. It really doesn’t have all that much to do with what happened over the weekend, although his knees are still fucking sore from it.

The upside is that Jean is apparently a fucking idiot like the rest of them, and is in all basic level classes. The only class they have together is homeroom, because the school is so small that there’s only two homerooms for the entire senior population.

Just another couple months - then he can stop pretending he wants to be book smart, and sleep in until the afternoons.

-

Eren only goes back because the park is too busy, skates on Jean’s ramp like it’s his own, and like he hasn’t been avoiding Jean.

Friday nights are always the busiest, especially since there’s usually a football game, and the field is across the road from the park. It’s a degenerate hive for underage drinking and copping a feel on trashy chicks, which would be appealing, if Eren didn’t hate every single one of them.

Which is why it’s so startling when the back door opens. Eren’s initial assumption is that it’s Jean’s parents, coming out to yell at him for the noise and to tell him to fuck off, but it’s actually Jean that walks out, in a too-tight pair of joggers and a tshirt, looking pretty fucking cozy. He grins at Eren and leans over the rail on his porch, smiles like he’s just as surprised as he is pleased with himself. Eren figured of all people, Jean would be the first one to line up for that kind of ritualistic teenage circlejerk back at the park, but maybe not.

“Hey,” Jean says casually, and Eren’s sneakers squeak louder than his wheels when he skids to a stop. “You missed me?”

Eren scowls at him. “Fuck off,” he says, and then uselessly adjusts his hoodie over his shoulders, submits to his nervous ticks.

Jean’s grin only grows, if it were possible, and he leans further over the rail. “Maybe I missed _you_ ,” he says, and Eren glares at him like he’s just admitted to fucking his sister and liking it, or something.

“Are you high?” he practically yelps.

Jean snorts, crumbles in on himself with the laugh, like it’s weighing him down. He doesn’t even have to confirm it, Eren knows, but he still slurs out a, “Yeah, bro. _Hah._ ”

“ _God_ , you’re fuckin’ gay,” Eren mutters, and he is going to aggressively deny to the grave that he heard Jean’s baked ass say _“so what if I was?”_

Eren just huffs, looks down at the holes in his converse, heart pounding in his chest. It’s just adrenaline, that’s all it is. That and Jean scared the shit out of him by coming out like that. Coming out of his _house_. Not… yeah.

“I need to go,” Eren says.

Jean is apparently some kind of superhero when he’s high, because he hops over the railing like it’s nothing, lands on his feet. The joggers he has flutter around his bare ankles, and Eren looks at this and realizes he doesn’t even have shoes on.

“Stay for a while, bro, it’s not even that late,” Jean says, flopping onto the platform and patting the space next to him, trying to get Eren to sit down. “I got more weed if you want.”

And he kind of _does_ want, but that would make this feel like more than it is. Like he actually came here for Jean, or to spend time with Jean, and not to steal a few quiet minutes on his half-pipe.

Eren sits down next to him, a little farther away than where Jean’s hand was, all despite the incessant nagging in the back of his brain telling him this is a bad idea. He’s just nostalgic, he reasons, he’d spent most of his childhood out in this very backyard, gazing up to the stars and pretending to be out camping with Armin.

“Sasha’s throwing a party next weekend,” Jean says, and then pulls a mangled looking joint from his pocket, hands it and a lighter over to Eren without him having to ask. Eren reluctantly takes it, sparks up and lets the weight of the smoke filling his lungs drag him down, make him heavy with it. “You wanna come?” Jean asks.

Eren shrugs. “Probably not.”

“You should come with me,” Jean slurs, and then he lazily tosses his arm over Eren’s shoulders. “It’ll be fun.”

Something about having Jean’s voice so close to his ear, to feeling his breath on his neck, makes Eren shiver. It’s not bad, but it’s fucking uncomfortable, and he’s not doing this now. He shoves Jean’s arm off of him with a grunt, probably far more aggressive than necessary considering how fucking wasted Jean seems to be already.

“I’m not fucking going,” Eren grumbles, and then he kind of wants to collapse into a heap and burrow beneath his hood, hide from the world and more specifically from Jean, because Jean doesn’t even seem fazed, just shrugs it off.

“Think about it,” he says, and the flippancy with which he says this is what pisses Eren off enough to get him standing and waltzing right back through the gate to head home.

-

Eren hates this fucking town.

Eren hates this town, and everyone in it, and yet he _still_ doesn’t want to go away for college. That should fucking tell you something, that should be a huge, glaring red flag that he is obviously not interested in furthering his education, but his mom still refuses to listen. She even threatens to ground him, and then rescinds it, because she’s too fucking nice.

Nice doesn’t matter when she’s perfected the art of making Eren miserable, though. He almost lifts his phone to call Armin, but he stops himself. Armin has new friends, lives in a dorm on the campus of his boarding school now. Armin will _definitely_ be going to college, but Eren doesn’t want to. He won’t, he doesn’t fucking care. It makes no logical sense with how much he hates this place, but people move for regular jobs all the time - he doesn’t need to keep trying to be smart to accomplish that.

Still. The way his mom looks at him, with that tiny little frown, like she’s more disappointed in herself than in Eren, makes Eren want to punch a hole in the wall. He doesn’t have any cigarettes left over from the last time he bought them, and then aches for a deeper kind of release, and doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he’s halfway to Jean’s house.

Much like the rest of his life, there is no plan - he’ll figure it out as he goes.

-

They’re both laid out on the platform of the pipe this time, both sets of feet dangling off opposite edges of it, heads laying side by side. They’ve got a pipsqueak of a joint being passed between them, but it’s enough to calm Eren’s nerves.

“You gonna tell me what’s wrong?” Jean asks.

Eren is too baked to snap at him for asking, too drowsy and stuck in this pathetic melancholic sludge. He wouldn’t talk about this otherwise, but Jean just makes it so _easy_.

“My mom wants me to go to a good school,” he says, voice clipped short when he inhales more smoke.

“Let me guess - you don’t want to?”

Eren exhales, watches the smoke dissipate against the faint light from the stars, pretends he’s making clouds. Do people look for shapes in their own clouds? What if you could shape any cloud you want?

Jean reaches up to shove at Eren’s shoulder, and Eren comes back to himself and answers, “Not really, no.”

Jean then plucks the joint from Eren’s fingers, takes a longer drag and holds it in his lungs for a while.

“What then, you wanna stay in this town forever? Skate until you’re an arthritic old geezer, or some shit, and you can’t even bend your knees anymore?” Jean asks him.

It twinges something sharp enough to get Eren to snap. “Fuck off, dude,” he bites.

Jean shrugs, and Eren can feel it, shoulders touching heads, close enough that they’re almost connected like puzzle pieces.

“Alright, it’s your choice,” Jean concedes. He then takes another hit, passes it to Eren, and quietly adds, “But I think you’re better than that.”

Eren goes back to forming clouds, pretends he doesn’t hear it.

-

Eren ends up going to the party with Jean.

And it’s not because he wants to. Or even because he likes Jean. It’s because there’s fuckall else to do in this town, and somehow the thought of skating alone has lost its appeal. Which is a thought he doesn’t want to delve too deeply into right now.

The worst part is, he’d decided to go the day before. Which meant before he’d walked over to Jean’s to meet him, he knew where he was going, there was a vague semblance of a plan. This is only a problem because it makes Eren self conscious, even if he knows he shouldn’t be. He doesn’t want to impress any of those assholes, but he still wears his tighter jeans, the ones without holes in them. He wears a button up flannel and washes his hair, and then gets angry with himself because he looks like someone he isn’t - ends up tossing his hoodie over all of it for comfort.

Still, he goes anyway. He goes, and Jean grins at Eren when he sees him like he knows something Eren doesn’t, so Eren turns right around and walks away. He knows he isn’t leaving, but then so does Jean, apparently. Jean only skips a little to catch up to him, starts walking by his side towards Sasha’s house.

Jean looks more casual than he does, too, which is infuriating for some reason. He’s got the same skinny shorts on with a Volcom tee, and then a snapback that sits halfway up his head, the bill of it flat. His hair curls up into it too, like he’d styled it, but that’s the only indication that any real effort was put into this look. Eren isn’t even as bothered by the fact he wears shoes without socks anymore, he’s just kind of nervous about everything now.

The party itself is so fucking unappealing, Eren doesn’t understand why almost their entire high school is here. The music is too loud and too poor in quality, the bass rumbles all of the bullshit knick-knacks on the shelves of all the walls, makes it seem like the entire structure is jumping. Jean grips Eren’s wrist, pulls him through the steaming crowd of sweating and grinding teens, and then places him safely in the corner of the kitchen as he pours them both drinks.

Two rum and cokes in, Eren hasn’t moved. Jean asked him if he wanted to dance a few times, but Eren refused to even grace those kinds of questions with responses. Eventually, of course, Sasha waltzes over. There’s been people coming up to say ‘hey’ to Jean all night, but they never stick around for long when they see who he’s with. Sasha seems a little bit tipsy, though, so she doesn’t seem to mind.

She leans up on her toes to whisper something into Jean’s ear, and Eren’s gut churns in rage. How fucking rude can you be, what kind of a shitty hostess tells secrets at her _own_ party? She has one arm gripping Jean’s bare bicep, the other curled around his shoulder, and Eren suddenly hates her more than _anyone_ else in the room.

“Over there?” he hears Jean ask her, once she’s done fluffing up her tits, putting herself on display. She’s only wearing a black skirt and a sweater, but Eren would still say she looks like a slut. Doesn’t have to explain that to anyone.

“Yeah,” she says, and then glances out over the crowd of people currently cavorting in her living room, bites down on her lower lip.

“Really?” Jean asks, and something in his voice makes Eren pay more attention, has him turning and looking like perhaps an active participant in this conversation. “ _That’s_ who you’re fucking?”

Sasha punches him in the arm, and Eren is flooded with a strange rush of relief. The rum must be finally getting to his bloodstream. Maybe now that she isn’t whispering and rudely excluding her own guests, Eren is less inclined to hate her.

“Jesus, we’re not fucking,” she says, cheeks tinged pink. “We’ve been on like two dates.”

Jean uses his height over her to his advantage, sizes this guy up. Eren glances out to where Jean is looking, and catches Connie standing awkwardly in the corner, scratching the back of his neck like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. About time, Eren thinks. He only wonders who asked who out, who got there first.

“Eh, he’s alright, I can see it,” Jean says, and for some reason this makes Eren blush.

Sasha does too, and then slaps his arm and says, “God, you are so fucking flaming.” She then turns to Eren, and startles him by speaking to him as she asks, “How can you stand hanging out with him?”

 _I can’t,_ Eren thinks, _I can’t fucking stand it, because I don’t understand why I get so excited the closer we sit on the half-pipe, I don’t understand why just sitting there with him feels almost better than dropping from the lip of the ramp, he came in and built quarter inch plywood walls around the two of us, and he’s not fucking letting me leave._

Eren doesn’t say any of this, though. His chest is burning from something, something he assumes is just alcohol, even though he’s never felt anything similar to it before. His limbs feel a little light, not entirely different to a high, and he catches Jean smiling at him and wants to scream.

He shrugs in response to Sasha’s question, decides it’s probably best not to answer it.

What she says next makes Eren’s blood run cold, makes all of that warm, pleasant fuzz from earlier drop right out of him.

“You two make a cute couple.”

“ _Fuck off,_ Sasha!” Eren yells, pushing her so hard she stumbles backwards, and ignores the enraged and protective outcry that follows in his wake, storms right the fuck out of her house without looking back.

Eren tunes out the rest of the world, chucks whatever was left in his red cup into the grass and adjusts his hoodie over his shoulders as he shoves his fists in his pockets and walks home.

Jean sprints up behind him only a moment or two later, stops him by placing a hand on his shoulder, which Eren violently jerks away from. Jean sighs and instead chooses to face Eren, to walk backwards since Eren refuses to stop again.

“She was only teasing,” Jean offers, and Eren isn’t doing this, isn’t talking about this shit right now. “Look, I’m sorry okay?”

Something in Eren snaps. He stops dead, guilt weighing down in his gut, and flails his arms around for effect.

“What in the _fuck_ are you sorry for?”

“I don’t know?” Jean shrugs, and his voice is all high pitched and strained. It’s the first time he’s really sounded like he’s at a loss around Eren, and something about it makes Eren uncomfortable. “I’m sorry I never stick up for you. People always talk about you and say you have no friends, but I’m your friend, right? I should stick up for you.”

Eren’s face flushes hotly, his chest aching in something like shame. Jean says it like he signed some kind of contract, like Eren is a pet he bought and is suddenly realizing he needs to take responsbility for it. It’s bullshit, and Jean is probably just drunk and spewing off fucking nonsense.

“Shut the fuck up,” Eren grumbles, and tries to walk past Jean, but gets stopped again.

“Just, wait, okay? I’m sorry I took you to the party,” Jean says, and Eren groans with feeling this time.

“Oh my _god_ , stop fucking apologizing, please-”

“-and Sasha didn’t even mean it, okay, she was just teasing me-”

“ _Stop_!” Eren screams, this time loud enough to get Jean to shut up and look significantly startled. “I didn’t fucking come here for you, I was just bored, okay? The only reason I fucking ever hang out with you is because I’m _bored_.”

Jean pulls back like Eren’s slapped him, recoils from the punch of the words as his face twists into a confused frown. Eren’s chest goes all tight, hurts the way it hurts when other people make fun of him at school, and he hates himself a lot right now. Jean doesn’t try to fight him this time, so Eren stomps the rest of the way home alone.

-

Jean has the kind of smile that makes Eren angry.

He sees it at school a lot, and somehow the knowledge that he can smile like that when Eren and him haven’t spoken for almost a week feels not unlike swallowing moss covered stones, a thick and uncomfortable weight in his gut.

He just- he has this mouth that stretches wide of sharp teeth, ones that make him seem like he’d be dangerous if he wasn’t so fucking charming. It reminds Eren of James Dean, or James Franco, or one of those ‘James’ assholes that he figures are socially acceptable for guys to consider attractive.

But then that would be like admitting he finds Jean attractive, and _fuck that_ with a nine foot pole.

-

It all boils down to this - Eren sliding open the lock on Jean’s gate from the other side, slipping into his house on a warm almost-summer afternoon. Eren half-expected a bunch of people to be here, so he’s a little surprised to see Jean sitting cross-legged on the lowest point of the half-pipe, a book filled with some kind of graphic diagrams open in his lap.

Jean glances up to him, his otherwise calm face sliding down into a frown, and then focuses back down on his book.

“Fuck do you want?” he asks.

Eren shrugs even though Jean isn’t looking, his board thudding as it hits the grass. “Skate? I guess.”

“You have a park for that,” Jean says sharply, and Eren’s stomach turns.

He isn’t sure why he’s here, didn’t plan this out at all. He doesn’t want to apologize, that’s not… it’s just, Jean doesn’t seem like he misses him at all, walks around school like he fuckin’ owns the place and ignores Eren’s existence like all the rest of them do.

And yeah, okay, it fucking hurts that he does that. After saying Eren was better than whatever, or sharing his weed, or looking up at the fucking stars together. Do people honestly just _forget_ that kind of thing? Is it so easy to forget a friend? Jesus christ, they weren’t even _friends_.

“Fine,” Eren mumbles, picking up his board. “I’ll leave.”

“You’re a fucking coward, bro,” Jean says, like it’s casual, like he’s back at that park surrounded by starstruck townies that think a tan is something to marvel at. Like he doesn’t even _know_ Eren.

“Who the fuck are you, then, huh? Why do _you_ get to say what I am when you don’t even talk to me anymore?”

Jean laughs, tosses his head back and makes Eren flinch at how cruel it sounds. Jean stands up, shakes his head like Eren’s some kind of lost cause, and walks up to his porch.

“Why would I even _want_ to talk to you?” Jean asks, and this stings a little more than Eren had hoped. Hearing it come from him and not from his own head, it isn’t nice. Jean then opens his screen door. “I don’t get perpetually _bored_ the way you do, apparently.”

Eren stares at the back of him, struck stupid like he can’t move. Something like rage boils up from within him, threatens to overflow. Jean is being intentionally cruel, his mind supplies- and acting on blind rage, he bolts into the house after him.

Jean is out of immediate sight, but it doesn’t matter. Eren knows this house like the back of his hand, knows the second bedroom is up the stairs, third door on the right. He takes the steps two at a time, thuds a little too loud to be in any way stealthy, and then slams Jean’s door shut behind him as he enters his room.

The worst part is how obviously surprised Jean is, maybe even a little afraid, and how hard he’s trying to hide it.

“You don’t want to talk to me?” Eren says, getting right up in Jean’s face, almost a little impressed with the way Jean doesn’t back away from it. “Why in the _fuck_ wouldn’t you leave me the hell alone then?”

Jean takes a pause at this, scoffs a little and looks at Eren like he’s no better than the dirt on his shoes. Eren would usually be inclined to agree, but not right now, not when Jean is making him somehow feel more worthless than everyone else in his life combined.

“No wonder you have no friends,” Jean says lowly, disgust thick in his tone, and the last thread holding Eren together snaps.

He shoves Jean backwards hard enough that he hits the edge of his bed, stumbles backwards on it and hits his head against the wall. His hand immediately grapples, tugs hard enough that Eren hears the threads on the stitching of his shirt snap. Jean isn’t doing much to fight him, only flailing and trying to keep his body in the right position, covering all the potential vulnerable openings Eren might take advantage of.

They push and shove at each other hard enough that Eren is panting through his nose, his face hot from exertion, his joints burning from trying to keep Jean from kicking him away. He ends up pinning Jean to his own bed, sitting on his stomach and holding both of his wrists in one hand. He must sit on something funny, because Jean yelps a little, and then it’s like he’s realized he has a voice.

Only what he says feels like a swift punch to the gut by itself.

“You wanna fag bash me, huh? _Do it_ , then. Fucking hit me.”

Suddenly the room is too quiet. The static filling his ears from earlier is gone, and all he can hear is the crack in Jean’s voice, the way they’re both breathing so hard. He jerks backwards like Jean’s spit on him or something, and his chest aches the worst he thinks it ever has.

“What in the fuck are you talking about?” he asks hazily.

Jean surges up suddenly, grabs Eren by the collar of his shirt. Eren’s brain braces itself for a punch, but what it gets instead is the rough press of Jean’s lips, the startling realization that Jean’s mouth is on his mouth, that Jean is _kissing_ him.

Eren’s brain short circuits then. He yanks Jean’s hands off of him, tears his shirt for sure this time, and holds Jean back down against his bed. Jean just lays there, goes a little limp like he’s resigned himself to whatever fate he just sealed with that kiss. He’s expecting Eren to hit him still, he’s waiting to get beaten, and Eren is struck with the horribly timed impulse to cry. His throat goes all tight and his chest aches, and then before he can think about what he’s doing, he leans down himself.

He kisses Jean harder this time, more like a fight than a show of affection, but when Jean moans into it, he softens. It kind of feels like throwing up, in a weird way. His stomach lurches, and his mouth gets all wet, like it’s waiting for something more than this. The only way he knows he isn’t throwing up is the distinct flicker of heat in his groin, and suddenly all of it makes sense, and none of it matters.

Jean moans again, louder this time, tangles his hands up the back of Eren’s hair, as Eren parts his lips, opens his mouth and starts licking Jean’s tongue. It’s wet and messy, and Eren is still resisting something he can’t place, but Jean has gone all soft and pliant beneath him, almost needy, arching up and chasing whatever brand of poison Eren is currently injecting into his bloodstream.

Their mouths part eventually, both of them breathing so hard it makes the air around them feel hot, and then Jean is leaning up to press kisses along Eren’s jaw, tilting his head to lick and suck at his pulse point. Eren starts rolling his hips down without realizing it, chasing that feeling in his groin, wanting something to come of it. He only realizes his arms are trembling when they buckle in effort and he nearly falls on Jean. To keep it from happening again, Eren pushes up and away from Jean, and whatever clouded haze they’d entered somehow clears.

Jean pulls away from Eren, sits and faces him on the bed and looks at him like he’s still a little afraid. Whether he’s afraid of being hit or waiting for Eren to bolt and say he’s bored, Eren isn’t sure.

Eren has his own fears, if he’s honest. That this somehow isn’t real, that this is Armin’s empty house he’s sitting in alone. That Jean is playing a joke, that this is just an elaborate prank so that everyone else in school can call him a fag, as well as whatever else they call him. It’s a little late to take it all back though, and Eren feels sickeningly needy, like the farther away Jean is, the less stable he feels.

So, he kicks off his shoes, gets up on his knees and scoots closer to Jean. Without any real grace to it, he wraps his arms around Jean’s neck, pulls him close enough that their chests are pressed together. The last part that touches are their lips, and then Eren helplessly whimpers when Jean starts kissing him with the same kind of expertise he uses to build pipes.

And Eren loses track of time like this, kneeling in between Jean’s legs, his arms shaking, kissing him so hard his mouth is sore and raw from it. He starts to re-situate himself, gets off his knees and presses as close as he can, and that’s when it happens - when Jean pushes close enough that he feels his dick, hard and hot through his shorts, and Eren pulls back.

It’s more of a perceived acceptable reaction than something he actually wants to do. He finds himself thinking about it, too, getting lost in it. He’s never touched someone else’s dick, only his own. It felt warm and hard, even beneath two or three layers of fabric. He wants to touch it without that there, without the barrier, which is a startlingly strange thing to think. He tries to regain his conscious thoughts and then starts touching his mouth, stroking the tender skin around his lips.

Jean does this thing where he almost surges forward and then stops himself, and he looks afraid again. Eren hadn’t noticed, too lost in his own head to see it until he catches Jean’s terrified stare, watches as he carefully crawls closer to Eren.

“We don’t have to do anything, you know?” Jean asks, and his voice is so broken, so wrecked from moaning and sucking on Eren’s tongue that it makes Eren’s cock jump in his jeans. “Kissing is nice, right? We can just kiss.”

Eren nods in a daze, answers with raw honesty, all pretenses of lying to Jean now completely thrown out the window. Jean scoots real close to him again, cups both sides of his jaw, and starts kissing him again, slides the wet, swollen fat of his lips between Eren’s.

 _I did this,_ Eren thinks. _Jean is panting because of me, his mouth is red and wet because of me. His mouth is red, and wet, and hot. So fucking hot._

Eren pulls away then, shuts his eyes and rests his forehead against Jean’s. Jean strokes the soft skin behind Eren’s ear with his thumb, and Eren shivers, gets distracted and dizzy enough from his touch to ask.

“Will you suck me off?”

Jean’s groan is so deep it sounds like he’s dying. Like Eren can say things like this and kill him with words. Eren smirks a little at the thought.

“ _Fuck_ yeah,” Jean breathes, and then pushes Eren onto his back.

Eren determinedly stares up at the ceiling for all of thirty seconds, basically until Jean has his pants undone and is yanking them down his legs. He watches with a sick kind of attention, too horny to really be embarrassed about anything - how scrawny his legs are, how dark and overgrown his pubes are, how Jean is probably very gay and has probably seen much more impressive dicks than his, how Jean is all tanned and smooth skin and Eren is the pastiest white boy you’ve ever seen.

None of that matters, because Jean pushes Eren’s legs apart, kneels between them and leans down, and he glances up once at Eren with that fucking half-twisted smile and then closes his lips over the head of Eren’s cock.

All he does for a while is suck on the head, his tongue rolling against the slit as he does, his lips still red and hot. Eren stares at him like a fucking idiot, jaw dropped and stupid, but he can’t look away. Jean’s mouth is so hot, and when he sucks it’s so tight, _so_ fucking tight, Eren can’t really help but roll his hips up into it, chasing the feeling.

Jean knows what he’s doing, because he pins Eren down with hands on his hips, pulls back enough to rub his face on the tip of Eren’s dick, get his lips wet with Eren’s precome, and then sucks him down as low as he’ll go.

Eren sees stars. Not the kind of stars he sees with Jean’s head next to his, not the kind of stars you make clouds for with smoke from burning lungs. He lets his head fall back, starts to whimper Jean’s name for no reason, just plays with it in his mouth as best he can, lets his stomach muscles jump every time Jean pushes down a little harder, sucks a little tighter.

“Dude, I’m gonna come,” he says, curling around the focal point of his conscious being that is currently residing in Jean’s mouth, flinching at how close he is. The words aren’t even words, he just breathes out and moans, tries his best to warn Jean. It feels like fire shooting through his veins, like the best kind of black tar, and then he’s shouting out nonsense and spilling hot down the back of Jean’s throat.

Eren only has just enough coherence to notice that Jean’s swallowed his come. _His_ come, the shit usually reserved solely for the drain in his shower and the center of a fist full of tissues, is sliding down Jean’s throat, inside of him. Jean then licks his lips and grins, and Eren pounces on him.

He ends up pawing uselessly at Jean’s shorts, leaning up to kiss Jean’s mouth and moaning at how hot and slick it is, how much of himself he can taste on him. He fumbles with the buttons, four of them in a row instead of one and a zip, and can’t seem to pull himself away from Jean’s mouth long enough to focus.

Jean pushes him away gently, stills his hands and holds him at arm’s length. Something small and terrifying manifests itself in Eren’s gut, something like rejection, but it all slips away when he notices just how blown the fuck out Jean’s pupils are.

“You don’t have to do it back,” Jean says, his voice thick and rough from having Eren’s dick down his throat. Eren already feels himself getting hard again, _shit_.

“Fuck you, man,” Eren says, shoving Jean’s hands off his shoulders, and scowling even deeper when he notices Jean grinning in response to the outburst, like he knows he’s got Eren now, he’s got nothing left to worry about.

Because _fuck him_ for thinking Eren doesn’t want to be as much a part of this as he does. Fuck him for thinking Eren might not want to taste him, might not want Jean to fuck his mouth and cry out his name when he comes.

“I’m not some kind of pussy,” Eren bites out, a supplement to his earlier outburst. Jean’s grin turns into a smirk.

“No, I know you’re no pussy,” Jean says, and Eren makes sure to punch him in the arm before pushing him back, before finally winning the battle with those fucking buttons and ridding Jean of his shorts.

-

Getting high afterwards is kind of like the icing on the cake. They stumble back into clothes, legs made of jelly and hearts running like wild rabbits, and then Jean leads Eren down and outside by the wrist. They lay out on the pipe, this time in the middle together, with Jean being bold and using Eren’s stomach as a pillow.

He feels like he has a second heart in his stomach, another pulse that Jean can probably feel racing, and when Jean pulls out the joint it’s like being given water after a marathon.

There’s probably something important Eren should say, perhaps both of them need to say, but it can wait for now. The adrenaline and arousal is finally ebbing from his blood, finally allowing him to calm and settle, to breathe deep enough that he can see Jean’s head rise and fall with it from his stomach. Eren pushes his fingers into Jean’s hair, plays with it, rubs at his scalp. Jean makes a sound like a purr, and Eren laughs, for what feels like the first time in weeks.

“You give pretty good head,” Jean says casually, around the smoke billowing from his mouth.

Eren snatches the joint from him. “ _Pretty good_ ,” he scoffs, but he doesn’t resist it when Jean’s hand finds his, when he threads their fingers together and holds on tight.

This summer might not be so boring now.


End file.
